“He’s just a big stupid,” Mattie said.

Del nodded. “It’s not like we didn’t know that. All we really needed him for was to help discombobulate our little Miss Jillian, and he did a fine job of that. But now . . . well, I guess we don’t have much more of a use for him, do we?”

He glanced at Mattie who only shrugged. He shifted his gaze to Lizzie.

“Guess you can say goodbye to the priest,” he told her, then he grinned. “Oh, wait. You can’t say anything anymore, can you?”

He turned back to the priest and waved his hand casually over the supine body. Instead of vanishing the way Timony had, the priest simply dissolved. Flesh and vestments turned into a dark, gooey liquid. Moments later, all that was left of him was a dark stain in the grass. The horrific and impossible sight was probably the only thing that could have taken Lizzie’s mind from her own awful predicament.

“Mattie and I are going back to the house,” Del said, drawing her attention back to him. “You can come or stay, I don’t care. But little nameless girl, don’t you forget for one sweet second that I’m the rule here. What I say goes.”

He seemed to be waiting for some kind of acknowledgement, so she nodded. She was too scared not to respond. What else might he do to her?

“That’s a good girl. Maybe there’s hope for you. Maybe I’ll give you back your mouth before you starve to death.”

He took Mattie’s hand and they started across the field, back to the house. Lizzie stared at the stain on the grass, trying to get her mind around how the priest had simply melted away, then her gaze drifted to Mattie’s stuffed toy, the two pieces lying abandoned on the grass where Lizzie had dropped them. She lifted a hand back to where her mouth should be.

The panic started up again, deep inside her, swelling.

She quickly dropped her hand and took a deep breath through her nose, trying to calm herself.

This wasn’t real, she told herself, remembering what Timony had said just before Del sent him away.

She and Jilly had been transformed only because they’d let it happen to themselves. Because they believed it was true.

It was all lies. That they could be trapped in the bodies of little girls. That Del was all-powerful. That a teddy bear could become a full-size grizzly.

But something didn’t fit.

She didn’t really believe in any of this.

Even with what her senses were telling her, she hadn’t fully accepted anything that had happened to her since the moment the bogans dragged her out of her bed. No. From before that. From when she first saw them at the crossroads.